Board Election Slate

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Recording Secretary

Emily Schlemowitz
Emily Schlemowitz is the Senior Curator at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Fiber Arts, where she leads the museum’s curatorial vision and has organized more than twenty-five exhibitions since 2018. She has authored, edited, and produced seven scholarly exhibition catalogs. Notable projects include Rosemary Ollison: Know My Heart (2025), the artist’s first solo museum exhibition; introducing 25 Million Stitches: One Stitch, One Refugee (2024)—a global participatory art project recognized with three Regional Midwest Emmy Awards—to WMQFA; Counting Threads (2022), an interdisciplinary exploration of textiles and mathematics; Akiko Ike: Boro Chiku-Chiku (2023), the first U.S. solo exhibition devoted to the Japanese textile artist; Victoria Findlay Wolfe: Now & Then, Playing with Purpose (2021); and Warmth, Comfort, Style, Fashion & Fine Art (2026), featuring works from the Pilgrim/Roy Collection. 

She has secured major funding from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Japan Foundation, and regional foundations. Previously, Emily held curatorial and editorial positions at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the Robert Motherwell catalogue raisonné, The Museum of Modern Art, and Yale University Press. She holds a B.A. in Studio Art from Smith College, an M.A. in Art History from CUNY Hunter College, and is currently completing an Executive M.B.A. at the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee.

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Recording Secretary

Isabella Armstrup
Isabella Amstrup is a weaver and livestock farmer based in East Meredith, NY. For over 10 years, she has been actively engaged with the textile community in New York, Philadelphia, and now rural Delaware County, NY. She received an M.S in Textile Design with a focus in weaving from Philadelphia University in 2016 and became an artist-in-residence at the Textile Arts Center later that year. She has worked as a textile designer, production weaver, and weaving instructor at Duvaltex, The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Claudia Mills Studio, Weaver House, and Succurro. She now co-owns and manages the Succurro Farm Cooperative with four other members in East Meredith, NY. For the last five years, she has been merging her technical training and work experience in the textile industry with her more recent experience livestock farming and exploring weaving as ancestral practice in relation to land. She invites others into this exploration through weaving workshops and a local weaving club.

Director of Communications

Shā’-nay Paris
Shā’-nay Paris is a T’kronto (Toronto)-based North American Textile artist, Educator, and Sensory Wellness Practitioner. She founded BKM, an eco-conscious studio and non-clinical practice, and created its educational/research stream, Hands Before Looms™ (HBL). Her primary research, The Ancestral Waves Project™, explores the Atlantic Coast’s Intra-diaspora™ (ACI) to highlight underrepresented, diverse, and neurodivergent populations across textiles and STEM. Centered in a Behavioral, Sensory, and Environment (BSE) Wellness™ framework, her practice makes STEM-adjacent sensory regulation tools relational and accessible.

Her work honors her lineage of technical artisans by drawing on ACI pre-industrial technologies—such as knot theory—and traditional handweaving, hand-knotting, finger weaving, and twining from the Northeastern Woodlands, including Wabanaki, Wampanoag, and Narragansett territories. With over 30 years of interdisciplinary leadership across Quebec, Ontario, and Nova Scotia, her background includes governance and training for the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres (OFIFC).

Through methodologies like Material Remembrance™, Neuro Tactile Cognitive Anchoring™, and Sensory Genealogy™, Shā’-nay translates textile arts into somatic tools bridging sensory regulation and STEM. Qualified in neuro-behavioral wellness and somatic regulation with psychology studies, her work is supported by TMU’s Diversity Institute and PARO’s ‘Mooka’am Kwe’ program. She is expanding her research through Anthropology and Indigenous Studies, and her work is at bohohaknots.

Director of Awards and Scholarships

Yashira “Yoshi” Jackson
Yoshi” Jackson is the Program Manager at Black Earth Ag Hub, Co-Founder of Àdìrẹ Farms & Colorworks & Nriife Roots Collective, and does Outreach & Data PM for West Philly Food Systems Coalition. She is a Philadelphia native and global citizen who has built a distinct career as a real estate agent, Sailor, Founder and entrepreneur and thrives on forging connections with like-minded individuals with their eyes on the future.

Guided by her passion for the creative process and commitment to empowering others, Yoshi provides strategic consultation, technical assistance, comprehensive grant services, as well as systems development and project management services. Especially driven by cultural legacy-driven projects; she helps businesses develop, grow, and manage their collective, real estate, and traditional ventures, offering them her singular perspective and a comprehensive depth of knowledge and skills. Forever a student, Yoshi embraces opportunities to grow, inspire, and continue her journey of discovery, approaching every project with curiosity, creativity, and an unrelenting determination to make a meaningful impact.

Director of Finance

Karen R. Cooper
Since 2019, Karen Cooper has served as the executive director of The Modern Quilt Guild (MQG), an international membership organization with more than 17,000 members. During that time, the MQG’s budget has nearly doubled while attendance at QuiltCon, the organization’s signature event, has grown more than 300%. During her tenure, Karen has focused on strengthening the organization’s operational processes, standardizing budget and financial protocols, and working with an accountant to institute GAAP standards for the organization.

Karen has nearly 30 years’ experience in the higher education and nonprofit sectors, serving as the executive director for Turfgrass Producers International, the senior manager for conference education at Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, and the assistant director for federal student financial aid at the University of Kansas. She has a master’s degree in education administration from the University of Kansas and a bachelor’s degree in information systems technology from the University of Houston. In her spare time, she is an avid quilter and lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas with her husband Mike, their dog Wrecks, and their cat Franklin.

Director-at-Large of Membership and Engagement

Harmony Jackson
Harmony Jackson is a textile artist, community builder, and founder of HMONEYFACTORY, a fiber intelligence studio and publication exploring design, sustainability, emerging fibers, material culture, and collective making. She currently serves as Community Engagement Manager at Black in Marine Science, where she supports community-centered programming, communications, and engagement for a national nonprofit.

Through HMONEYFACTORY, Harmony has cultivated an active fiber community through accessible pattern education, monthly pattern tests, collaborative crochet projects, and public writing on fiber systems and material innovation. Her work bridges design, sustainability, digital community-building, and public learning around emerging fibers and contemporary textile culture. Harmony has also developed HMF Pattern, a membership-based platform concept designed to support crocheters and knitters through pattern access, collaborative testing, and community-centered learning. The project was further shaped through a competitive pre-accelerator program, where she explored how digital membership models can support fiber artists, pattern designers, and creative communities.

As Director-at-Large for Membership and Engagement, Harmony hopes to help the Textile Society of America deepen member connection, expand access for emerging textile practitioners, and create welcoming spaces for scholars, artists, makers, and material innovators to gather across disciplines.

Director-at-Large of Ethics and Community Knowledge

Oluwatobi “Tobi” Clement
Tobi Clement is an Independent Researcher and Interdisciplinary Artist based in Baltimore, Maryland. Their work examines the relationships among healing justice, land stewardship, material research, and creative practice. As co-founder of Àdìrẹ Farms & Colorworks, Tobi collaborates on a practice that moves from seed to surface, cultivating dye and fiber plants, processing botanical pigments, and transforming these materials into fine art, textiles, and mixed-media work.

Grounded in four interconnected areas of land stewardship, studio practice, research, and archival documentation, Tobi’s work engages botanical materials while supporting the study and continuation of African diasporic textile traditions. Their approach is rooted in seed sovereignty, regenerative cultivation, cultural continuity, and reciprocal community relationships. Working responsively with seasonal cycles and material behavior, Tobi explores the relationships among land, body, color, and memory.

Director of Strategic Planning

Prof. Dr. Vandana Bhandari
A TSA member for over 20 years, Dr. Bhandari served four years as Director of Awards and Scholarships, managing the Founding Presidents Award, Bradford/Elliott Award, R. L. Shep Book Award, and Research Travel Grants. She also produced and presented a TSA-funded film series on women embroiderers. Her field projects with Indian artisans advance craft preservation and sustainable livelihoods. She currently leads a Delhi Crafts Council initiative on Phulkari embroidery revival and is writing a book on Indian textiles.

Her career blends academia, practical design, and cultural preservation, and she has combined these three fields in my career, both in India and on international platforms. She currently serve on the advisory boards of a number of Indian design institutions. She has authored and edited books on fashion and textiles, which have appeared in various periodicals and publications. Her works include the books “Costumes, Textiles, and Jewellery in India: Traditions in Rajasthan” and “Jewelled Textiles: Gold and Silver Cloth of India.” She is serving as the volume editor for the Volume on Embellishment in Bloomsbury’s Encyclopaedia of World Textiles.

Director-at-Large of Symposium

Dr. Nader Sayadi
Nader Sayadi is a historian of Islamic art and material culture whose research centers on textiles, attire, and architecture in West Asia and the Indian Ocean from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. His work examines how textiles were made, exchanged, circulated, and used, with particular attention to their social, political, economic, and cultural significance. Nader brings together textile history, material culture, the built environment, and the study of craft communities to understand textiles as active participants in shaping societies and histories. A former Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Ratti Center, he has conducted research across major international collections, including the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Textile Museum in Washington, D.C., the Textile Research Center in Leiden, and the Tar-o-Pood Museum in Yazd. His teaching and collaborations with artists and weavers further connect historical scholarship with contemporary textile practice.

Director-at-Large of Symposium